THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER “Brilliant….About as good as a thriller can be.”—The New York Times Book Review “[A] nail-biter perfect for Room fans.”—Cosmopolitan “Sensationally good psychological suspense.”—Lee Child Praised by Karin Slaughter and Megan Abbott, The Marsh King’s Daughter is the mesmerizing tale of a woman who must risk everything to hunt down the dangerous man who shaped her … mesmerizing tale of a woman who must risk everything to hunt down the dangerous man who shaped her past and threatens to steal her future: her father.
Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, and a business that fills her days. But she also has a secret: she is the product of an abduction. Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature, and despite her father’s sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too…until she learned precisely how savage he could be.
More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so soundly that even her husband doesn’t know the truth. But now her father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh. The police begin a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. Knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King—because only one person was ever trained by him: his daughter.
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This gorgeously written eerie suspense novel gave me chills as it raced toward an unexpected climax. I loved it!
Heart thumping. There are human beings who have never seen modern technology. Imagine being thrust in our modern society as a pre-teen having never seen a TV or cell phone. Excellent excellent story. Very realistic.
My good friend Karen Dionne’s book The Marsh King’s Daughter is a terrific rollercoaster read. Based on her own experience of homesteading, Ms. Dionne places you fair and square in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with exceptional characters and a fantastic read.
Karen DionneKaren Dionne has just become one of my favorite authors! Her intense, unusual setting, survivalist living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, draws the reader into a fascinating and unknown world. The premise of the story is totally compelling; the action, knife-sharp. I immediately bought the next one, The Wicked Sister, when I finished. The Marsh King’s Daughter is on a par with Where the Crawdad’s Sing in terms of world building; but much more urgent pacing.
The Marsh King’s Daughter is both suspenseful and thoughtful, setting up a situation that’s difficult to contemplate and yet one a reader might take further in his/her own imagination. How would my life have turned out if I was this character? Who would I be now? Definitely a page-turner and not one a reader will soon forget.
Fascinating and frightening, mesmerizing and memorable. This story of a girl born to a kidnapped young woman and growing up in captivity is one I doubt I’ll ever forget.
Wow! This story grabbed me by the throat and didn’t let go. Helana is the daughter of a narcissistic survivalist and the woman he kidnapped and held in captivity. Her greatest strengths and deepest flaws are both bestowed upon her by the father she loves and hates. Fascinating characters, but not a novel for the faint of heart.
This psychological thriller was certainly a page-turner. The Marsh King’s Daughter, while containing excerpts from the same-named “fairy-tale”, is an interwoven story of past and present. As an adult, Helena has a loving husband, two little girls, and makes jam that the tourists literally eat up. However, Helena is hiding a secret from all who know and care about her. When her father escapes from prison, Helena must confront her past and solve the mystery of his disappearance before time runs out. This becomes a novel of retribution as Helena races the clock to right the wrongs of her past. Full of twists, turns, and suspense, I really enjoyed as Helena continued to development throughout the story. The geographical and historical references to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula helped bring this story alive as well. Would recommend.
Very interesting. With a side of psycho!!!!
I liked the way the story develops in the beginning while giving detailed information of the setting, the main character and background, well done. The main story turns out to only be a lightly constructed frame to tell the extensive backstory. The backstory overwhelms the forward motion of the current day story. The back story is interesting and dynamic but at the same time episodic. It kept me from dropping into the fictive dream and losing myself in the point of view of the character. The backstory was “told,” and was not in scene which is another reason the fictive dream failed to fire for me. I liked the characters. I liked the enigma that was the father and most of all the details of what it was like to live in a marsh, loved that part. But since there were so many long breaks with the backstory I lost track of the current day tension and didn’t really care. There are two books here both good enough to read and might stand well enough on their own. Here’s the kicker though, I stopped reading at page 181 to 186 when I, as a reader was manipulated. I won’t describe it because it is spoiler.
This book is very popular and I can see why. I would whole-hardheartedly recommend this book and would even take a peek at the author’s next book.
I could not stop reading it once started. Have already told several friends to read it and will suggest it to my book club next year.
Hands down one of the best books I’ve ever read! Karen Dionne took me to a dark and exciting world where my senses came alive and my very survival was at stake. A delicious tale from start to finish.
I’m very late to The Marsh King’s Daughter, but after meeting Karen Dionne at Thrillerfest ’19 and finding her utterly delightful, I had to read it. WOW what a book. A dark fairy tale about lies, love, and healing a broken family. Throw in some exotic survivalism. I LOVED IT.
This fantastic novel takes place in a remote cabin the the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. If it seems strange to the reader that anywhere can be as remote as this cabin was, let me assure you that there are still areas like this in Michigan’s UP where a person could hide for years. This book grabbed me on the first page and kept me enthralled until the end. It was interesting to see how the attitudes of the main character towards her parents changed throughout the book as she grew up and became a mother too.
The story is told by Helena as an adult with a lot of flashbacks to her younger years. She didn’t realize it until she was 14 but her mother had been kidnapped by her father at age 14 and held captive in a remote area of northern Michigan. Helena worshiped her father when she was growing up – she hunted and fished with him and spent most of her waking hours with him. She had him on a high pedestal. She also mirrored her father’s negative opinion of her mother and didn’t have much regard for her mother when she was growing up. The hero worship of her father in her younger years could have been difficult to understand but Helena didn’t know any better, she didn’t realize that their lives were any different from other people because she never saw anyone but her parents as she was growing up. Twenty years after she and her mother escaped and her father went to prison, she has buried her past and kept it a secret even from her husband. When her father escapes from prison, she knows that she is the only person who can find him before he inflicts harm on other people.
The way that the story is told with Helena’s search for her father as an adult and flashbacks to her childhood in the marsh, helps to make this novel very suspenseful. Helena is a well down main character who changes throughout the novel. The setting is beautiful even though the circumstances are horrific. This is a beautifully written, suspenseful novel with a main character that I won’t soon forget.
LOVED this book! She had the perfect life, but she also carried a dark secret. Twenty years later, she must pay her sins as the Marsh King’s Daughter.
I’ve heard about this book for years, so I finally decided to see what it was about.
Wow. Just wow. One of the most original, yet completely realistic and convincing books I’ve ever read.
I liked this book, but I didn’t love it. The story was interesting, but somehow the daughter and her motherdidn’t evoke the sympathy they should have. The descriptions of the marsh were long and occurred too often. The author failed to bring those two characters to life for me.
A gripping psychological thriller. The author’s development of the daughter and her changing relationship with her mother and father is multifaceted. Her confusion and conflict of mixed emotions are insightful and heartbreaking. A great book that reads like a true account.
This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime books that will stay with you forever, long after you read the last page and close the book.
Wow! This was written like an autobiography. The details between timelines are fantastic and flipping between the 2 is done seamlessly. Great book!